


Five Times Mira Saw Saul for the First Time

by ariadnes_string



Category: Homeland
Genre: Antisemitism, Canon Jewish Character, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Mira Saw Saul for the First Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roga/gifts).



> Spoilers through the end of Season Two.
> 
> thanks to alba17 for the beta!

**One** :

Mira saw him first from behind. She liked to remind him of that, over the years. “Turn around,” she’d say, “show me your good side.” And even if he was in a crappy mood, Saul would indulge her with a pivot and wiggle, a little _badda-boom_. If he was in a good mood, he’d catch her up close and do an exaggerated bump and grind around the living room. She’d giggle with pleasure, just like she had that first time, tickled to have found the one geek at that grad school party who could dance. She’d remember the first shock of his body against hers, the hard, graceful lines of him. And she’d pinch that fine ass, just because she could.

**Two**

Saul was setting up the Shabbat candles when she got home, and the house smelled of olive oil and garlic. Mira paused in the doorway. Saul was more observant than most American Jews she knew, but he didn’t do this every Friday.

“What happened?” she said, dropping her briefcase. “Did something happen at work?”

“Nothing happened.” Saul put his hands on her elbows and leaned in to kiss her. He was still dressed in khakis and a button-down, tie loose around his neck, which meant he’d gone straight to cooking when he got home. She frowned. “I’ll tell you later,” he said. “Let’s eat. Are you hungry? Let’s eat.”

So Mira resigned herself to not changing out of her work clothes either, just shed her suit jacket and moved towards the table.

“Will you?” he asked, holding out the matches.

She took them. She’d learned the words and gestures of the ritual, just as Saul had learned to light the lamps for Diwali. She liked the idea of Shabbat, liked the setting off of sacred from mundane. But she felt self-conscious now, wondering what he expected from her, what he needed. She kept her eyes on the wavering flames as she lit the candles and passed her hands over them, but remembered to close them as she said the words.

“ _Barukh atah Adonai…_ ” She stumbled a little, sure she was forgetting something or mispronouncing things.

But when she got to the end, or what she thought was the end, she opened to eyes to see Saul watching her through the twinned flames with an expression she’d never seen before. Reverence, she might have said, if the word hadn’t embarrassed her.

“You,” he said. “You’re so beautiful.”

**Three**

He wasn’t a man given to shouting. He was slow to anger and when he did get mad it built in him like an iceberg: cold and deadly, but not quick.

Only once did Mira see something else.

They had gone to a party at the home of a wealthy politico—someone in charge of getting some bill through Congress that was important to Agency funding. The family’s blood was bluer than blue and their money had probably come over on a chest in the Mayflower. But it was a terrible party—too much booze and not enough food. Everyone was flushed and wobbly half an hour in.

Finally, Mira and Saul decided they’d done their due diligence and made their way over to their hostess to say thank you and good-bye.

She was tall and elegant in a red silk shift, her hair a perfect grey helmet, deep in conversation with a woman who might have been her twin.

“…He tried to Jew me down on the price,” she was saying as they approached, “but I showed him what for pretty damn quick.”

She turned to face them, and as her eyes met theirs, Mira saw, not embarrassment or shame, but a kind of cold defiance, as if she were daring them to call her on her words.

Saul didn’t. He said good-bye civilly, and Mira followed his lead. Only when they got back to the car did he slap his palms three times on the steering wheel and thump his head back hard against the seat. “That bitch,” he said, “that ignorant dried-up hag.”

There was a note in his voice Mira had never heard before, and when she looked at him she saw not the fury of a grown man, but the wild, impotent rage of a child, welling up from some forgotten place, some buried hurt. 

**Four**

She went to Bombay because he had become a stranger to her. It was as simple and as horrible as that. One day she rolled over in bed and found she didn’t know the man lying beside her.

**Five**

But when she heard his familiar, tired voice after the explosion, all her love for him came flooding back in a tide of worry and relief. She knew every creak in that voice, every dip and hesitation, better than she knew her own.

And yet, as soon as she got off the plane, she also knew things had happened to him that she would never understand. She kissed him cautiously in greeting, but he seemed fragile, ready to shatter if she pressed too hard. 

Their house smelled unlived-in: of furniture polish in unaired rooms, not food or living bodies. 

“I need to shower,” she said, suddenly conscious of her own travel-worn clothes, her unwashed hair. 

He’d left all her soaps and lotions in the master bath, just as they had been, and she cried a little, under the spray, wondering if coming back had been a fool’s errand after all.

There was music playing when she came downstairs again, soft jazz, almost mournful. Saul stood in the middle of the living room, his back to her, shoulders slumped in exhaustion.

Mira slid her arms around him and laid her cheek between his shoulder blades. And there it was: the shock of his body against hers, the lines of him softer now, perhaps more stooped, but graceful still.

Saul placed his hands over hers, and swayed with her in time to the music.


End file.
